Lessons from my first ANB

[Neponde]

This was my first ANB, and I had a lot of fun. My early hope was simply to get the two CTs and a 77 or two, but halfway in I decided to go for a push. I thought I would record a few things I wish I had known going in, to help future first timers, and maybe the pros could weigh in on some corrections! Like many things in life, I think the experienced players forget what things are like for newbies

this is all from the perspective of a mobile Frostfire mage.

1) Elban sucks.
2) Fire Lily is likely a far better choice for newer mage players attempting a push, rather than a crit build. Significant toughness is lost in building the crit equipment, and lacking the skills of the pros it makes it difficult. Crit seems also much more reliant on thermal shock spikes when the TOP is activates, which takes much more skill to time correctly.
3) save the boxed ephemeral jewelery for your push build
4) Elban sucks.
5) a little extra vitality and ability rate would be super helpful for farming.
6) Get those CLs very high before bothering to push anything. Leave the ego behind. (As much fun as it was sitting at #1 for a few days)
7) Sadly, mobile only mages will never be as competitive as desktop. The inability to vortex while beaming is crippling at the higher trials.
8) osmosis helmet enchantment is critical for pushing the higher trials, but not needed for farming.
9) Using a crit build, timing your thermal shock well can make or break your pushing.
10) I wish I had practiced more with my non-event mage on a variety of bosses. I was barely passed trial 90 on my main toon, and had little experience with elban\magroth\garm\tbd, as I was just farming Kara. I burned my entire last hour trying to beat elban at 128, and got him on my final run (at least I ended on a good note!)
11) chasing a "better" bracer of mastery probably isn't worth the effort unless you are looking to CT one.
12) turn off "auto attack after move & cast" for clearing, and ON for the boss.

questions I still have
1) Best way to gold farm.. I burned 90 minutes on story mode for about 15 million gold. I've seen others get huge gold doing low trials, but I'm not sure how. Trials seem to give very little gold.
2) the top mage (by a huge margin) obviously has some skills, but they also had 2 million toughness. This surprised me, but I suppose the best mages get by with their glass cannons on some serious skills, but the high toughness can cover (until the really high trials).

Any pros, or other newbies, who would like to weigh in?

I think for Gold I'm going to go BH. Romme's video of a mobile BH smoking TL181 was super inspiring.

[Teebs]

To avoid too much frustration burning through resources - start with a Rare XP/Frost BoM - that is my 2 cents on that.

Otherwise - hitting 128 on your first ANB is awesome.

... KTB

[Neponde]

I got super lucky and crafted a decent epic one first try this round, then again with a legendary.

After that, while I was crafting for a good 77, I was getting lower on time, and saw that a leg BOM only took regular essences. So I started tossing the dice to aim for a good BOM to CT out.. Many dice rolls later, was thoroughly disappointed. Never got one better than the first one I made.

Great idea with the rare though. I just was not really considering going lower than epic for some reason...

[Teebs]

Neponde ,

The thing about the Mage BoM is that you are going for a specific bonus (in your case a Frost Beam) rather than a range of acceptable usable bonuses that can be used (as a minimum for their stats).

The other classes, while they have preferred bonus, are more forgiving on acceptable bonus, and the stats alone can function to provide the boost. The Mage BoM can be a very frustrating crafting.

Ostensibly, you should get the FB bonus 1 out of every 10. For anyone who has tried to craft it though will have seen that can definitely be not the case.

[Neponde]

Hah! 1 in 10 my foot.
Yes, it definitely felt like chasing the wild goose.

[bojck]

Great job with your first ANB! You are absolutely right about pushing with fire lily in ANB - there are two main reason to go for crit in anb: getting top 5 (also often possible with lily) and crafting crit gear to take out of the event. The latter is quite convincing though, as full celestial crit gear is ultimately the clear winner (on PC at least)

[Neponde]

Thank you for your very thorough guide! Not a chance I could have done anywhere close to as good without it.

Now that I think about it, perhaps part of the reason crit is so much harder in anb is because you only have 2 CT'd gear.. Thats a lot of lost vitality as compared to your main toon with full CT'd gear (assuming you have done a few ANBs)

[Ozymandius]

Congrats on your ANB finish! My first finish was probably around TL80, but that was back before crafting when you had to rely completely on dropped gear. Nice advice for newer players. I would add that you should have a clear strategy for important decisions like which abilities to prioritize, how to get the most out of free stuff (e.g., epic gear boxes and rewards), what are your crafting goals, and how long to farm XP before switching to push.

The best ANB strategy for gold is to add XG on your farmer jewelry and gear. I crafted my Fire Lily farmer jewelry with one pure XP epic, one spilt XP/XG epic, and one pure epic [Power, Haste, AR]. Once I hit level 70, I started running the combined XP/XG jewelry while I collected gemstones for the last pieces. Used the rewarded jewelry boxes to craft a high level rare with Power, Haste, or AR and adding teardrops for crafting the other two rares and radiants for crafting the epics. You end up with farming jewelry with Power/Haste/AR around 270, XP just over 95, and XG around 70. Add some XG to a couple of pieces of gear and use XG boosters, and you will bypass the need to perform gold farming. I still collected XG gear just in case, but for the last two events, I have not had to farm gold even once while completing around 60+ crafts and even adding enchantments.

FYI, if your only goal is to earn maximum XP without pushing for medals, then only a pure XP ring with no other stats [around 130+ XP] can beat the ephemeral's XP stat.

[Neponde]

That makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification!
Did you run low tls for any gold, or you just found that doing your reg farming was enough?

[Ozymandius]

With the XG on jewelry and cape, I got enough gold from just running trials to avoid having to sidetrack and do a gold farming run. That will probably be more important in Gold ANB where there is less time on the game clock. I ran XP and XG boosters most of the time on my XP farming runs.

[Neponde]

Awesome. Thanks Ozzy! I do plan on using boosters for most of it (except if I push at the end). I think my league will be bumped up so I have far less chance of ranking high amongst the pros! I'll likely use some gems, but not go too crazy.. Maybe around 1000-1500.

[Romme]

Haha new bh meta is fun but just as much frustrating because you get 1 shot by a single stray arrow at higher trials. But happy to help if you need it!

[Neponde]

Yeah, but I like the freedom and consistency of damage output.. Mage is so dependent on a good beam timed well. Been practicing with BH, and having a lot of fun with it so far. I'm sure I'll come back to mage, but, *fun* is my primary goal!

Thanks again for your excellent video!

Although now that I think about it, do you use the molten belt for farming, or switch to the one that boosts heatseekers?